Archive for the ‘lodging’ Category
January 26, 2009
An article in Sunday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that the Mountain View Inn near Greensburg, Pa., had not gotten the loan it needed and was closing.
“First Commonwealth Bank on Friday refused to renew a revolving line of credit the innkeepers said they needed to see the hotel through the four slowest months for the hospitality industry,” according to the article.
Despite 60 weddings booked this year (a 50% increase), the owners of the Lincoln Highway landmark said they needed the funds to “see the hotel through the four slowest months for the hospitality industry.” They also cited competition from numerous national hotel chains that have opened nearby. In recent decades, the Boohers invested $4 million in building two new wings, doubling the inn’s capacity to 90 rooms.
Famous guests included Harrison Ford, the Dalai Lama, Fred Rogers, Arnold Palmer, Bernadette Peters, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Guy Lombardo.
Tags:Greensburg PA, historic hotel closing, hotel, Lincoln Highway, Mountian View Inn, recession, roadhouse
Posted in food, highways, history, Lincoln Highway, lodging, roadside, travel | 1 Comment »
January 23, 2009
Now that I’ve shifted to working day and night on my book for 2010 — The Ship Hotel: A Grand View along the Lincoln Highway — I’ve dug out copies of the blueprints. Most fascinating are drawings of the original building planned in 1928. The Ship would be built around this basic structure a few years later. Here’s a look at a side elevation of the original stand with some castle ornamentation. You can see how it hung onto the mountainside!
I’ve seen lots of photos but, oddly, NEVER one during construction of either the original hotel or its conversion to the Ship. Anyone have more information or images from its construction?
Tags:Grand View Point, Lincoln Highway, PA, roadside attraction, Ship Hotel
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January 22, 2009
The Mountain View Hotel & Conference Center, a historic hotel and restaurant founded 1924, is expected to close on Sunday, saddening not only fans of roadside rests and historic hotels, but shocking brides and others who have receptions planned.
Located between old and new routings of the Lincoln Highway east of Greensburg, the popular local landmark was one of the last old-style county hotels along the LH in Pennsylvania. Situated atop a small ridge, it also was part of the tradition in the state of roadhouses that located on mountaintops to serve the boiling radiators of early autos. The P-G and Trib both carried the news. Updates ran here and here.
The Trib noted that owner Vance Booher III blamed the recession as the most recent factor hurting business, and that his bank “has refused to extend a line of credit that would keep the hotel open. Unless he can obtain an emergency loan by the weekend, he will have ‘no feasible alternative but to cease all major operations.'” That does leave a slim window of hope for continued operation.
The inn’s 89 guest rooms are each uniquely decorated, from elegant 18th century to early American country. The original part of the inn survives along with its knotty pine paneling and great stone fireplace
Vance Booher purchased the inn in 1940 when only one of the original 40 upstairs rooms had running water. Private baths were added by knocking out walls and reducing the number of original rooms to 26.
Vance III took over in 1983 along with his wife Vicki. He has been recognized as an Advanced Certified Wine Professional by the Culinary Institute of America, one of only 16 such individuals in America and the first to be so recognized on the East Coast. Their sons were making it a fourth generation enterprise.
The Mountain View and its original 1925 outdoor pool (removed in 1973) served as a retreat for the wealthy of Pittsburgh until WWII, when it also served as the social headquarters for Army Air Corps cadets training at the nearby airport in Latrobe, now Arnold Palmer Regional Airport (which lays atop the Lincoln Highway).
The website is still operational, with upcoming events listed. Let’s hope financing comes through to keep it going. It’s also a good reminder to patronize locally owned businesses when you can.
Tags:Greensburg PA, historic hotel, Lincoln Highway, roadhouse, roadside
Posted in food, highways, history, Lincoln Highway, lodging, roadside | 6 Comments »
January 16, 2009
My Lincoln Highway Companion book is still being proofed for release later this Spring, but already the deadline is here for my next book, due out in 2010: The Ship Hotel: A Grand View along the Lincoln Highway.
One part will feature stories from those who visited or worked there. If you have a recollection or photo you’d like to share, please write.
I also have some Ship info and images on my website at www.brianbutko.com/lh.ship.html
Tags:Bedford PA, boat-shaped hotel, Grand View Point Hotel in PA, Lincoln Highway, roadside attraction, Ship Hotel, US 30
Posted in food, highways, history, Lincoln Highway, lodging, Road trip, roadside, souvenirs, travel | 10 Comments »
January 9, 2009
In November I reported that Sylverta Blaugher had written about visiting her family at the Cove Mountain Tea Room on the Lincoln Highway east of McConnellsburg, Pennsylvania. She sent more than a dozen wonderful family photos. Here are a few to get you dreaming of roadhouses a half-century ago.
Sylverta says, “The earliest photo is 1946 when my Great Uncle Harry and Great Aunt Pearl Forrester bought the Tea Room. They renamed it Forrester’s Place. After they died, cousins from Ohio bought the property to use as a hunting lodge when they came in to go deer hunting.”
Uncle Harry, Brownie the dog, cousin Joan Hocker, and Sylverta’s mom Irene Beltz.
On the rooftop lookout: Irene with Brownie, cousin Bob Hocker, Irene’s classmate Bob Heller, unknown.
Sylverta on a cinder pile, with the roadhouse in the background, October 1955.
Irene, 1971.
A composite photo of the house in the 1970s. Vandals began destroying the property and the house was demolished. New owners built an A frame further back on the property. Here’s the site today:
Tags:highway history, Lincoln Highway, McConnellsburg PA, mountaintop stop, old roadhouse, PA travel, roadhouse, roadside attraction, vintage photo
Posted in highways, history, Lincoln Highway, lodging, roadside, signs, transportation | Leave a Comment »
December 15, 2008
Looking through my computer files today I found this postcard scan of Weaver’s Motel along the Lincoln Highway on the east side of Greensburg, Pa.
When I began researching the highway in Pennsylvania two decades ago a few remnants of this motel remained. Judging by Google Street View, what looks like the main building of the tourist court still survives but that’s it.
Tags:Greensburg PA, Lincoln Highway, motel, Pennsylvania, postcard collecting, tourist court
Posted in highways, history, Lincoln Highway, lodging | 1 Comment »
November 27, 2008
For weeks I’ve been proofreading a design draft of my next book, Lincoln Highway Companion. Though I’d like to think I sent off a masterpiece, corrections from my editor and volunteer readers proves that there’s always room for improvement.
The 15 or so readers have caught misspelled words or street names that have changed or found listings for places that have closed. The maps were only half done, being that they were such a massive part of the project, so they are receiving tons of additional info—street names, landmarks, geographic feature notations, and letters keyed to Must-See attractions.
Hardest to take are the businesses that were included that have since closed. I’m not only sad for the effort that I (or guest writers) put into those stories, but the road is one bit less interesting each time a place closes or is demolished.
I’m proofing so many different aspects, and comparing to so many original sources and maps, that it’s eating away weeks of free time. I’ll be taking a few days now at Thanksgiving to try to finish it.
Tags:book underway, Lincoln Highway, Lincoln Highway Companion, proofreading my book
Posted in food, highways, history, lodging, Road trip, roadside, signs, transportation, travel | 2 Comments »
November 21, 2008
Ibapah is along the original Lincoln Highway that crosses the Utah desert between Salt Lake City and Ely, Nevada. You’ll need most of a full day to drive the dirt roads between those points but you’ll also see Orr’s Ranch, Fish Springs, Gold Hill, and other unpopulated outposts.
The Ibapah Trading Post is bound to become one of the Lincoln Highway’s must-stops, much like Oatman, Arizona, draws travelers to a desolate part of Route 66. I’ve been corresponding with Carolee Johnson at the post in anticipation of my next book, Lincoln Highway Companion. The big news is they now have a cabin for rent along with the old country store.
Carolee wrote:
We are trying to make this stop on the Lincoln Highway a little more inviting as funds become available, and people are welcome to stop through in June to watch real Western Cowboys rope and brand the livestock, and check out a real Old West ghost town. The buildings in the town are all still there as it was at one time the main stop for the overland stage between Chicago and Sacramento. There are stories of bandits coming to rob gold, mined out of the Queen of Sheba Gold Mines, out of the safe in the store where it waited for the overland stage. Efforts were foiled when the store owner was tipped off and hid the bars of gold in the ashes of the old pot belly stove. We still have the safe that was rolled out and blown up with dynamite by the bandits. Needless to say they didnt get the gold. This stop on the Lincoln Highway is teaming with US history and deserves to be on the map. I very much appreciate what you are doing for the history of the Lincoln Highway, and hope this helps a little.
Tags:ghost town remnants, highway history, Ibapah UT, lonely outpost, Route 66 -Oatman AZ, Utah, Wild West
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November 14, 2008
New on DVD from PBS affiliate WQED is producer Rick Sebak’s 1992 program, The Pennsylvania Road Show. This video includes my original trip with Rick on the Lincoln Highway east of PIttsburgh, 15 years before he set out to film his national Lincoln Highway show that just debuted.
Driving in my Camaro convertible, we cruised to Shirey’s Cabins, the Ship Hotel, and other Lincoln Highway landmarks – many, including those two, now gone. Sebak also visits Lee’s DIner and the Shoe House, both along the Lincoln Highway near York. On the cover is a 1920s Lincoln Highway postcard.
Also featured are visits to Reptileland, movie cowboy Tom Mix’s birthplace, and the ducks walking on fish at the Linesville Spillway. The DVD is available from WQED for $19.95.
Tags:Lincoln Highway, PA Road Show, PBS-related video, roadside attractions, Ship Hotel, WQED
Posted in food, highways, history, lodging, Road trip, roadside, travel | Leave a Comment »
November 10, 2008
Scott Berka alerts us that the woman who was running Niland’s Cafe in Colo, Iowa, had some medical issues and closed the cafe after Labor Day. The Colo Development Group is hiring a manager to operate it, hoping to reopen shortly after Thanksgiving. Winter days will be Friday, Sat., Sunday, then likely back to daily except Monday come Spring. The motel is still for rent at $49.99 per night.
Until the acafe reopens, those interested in renting a room should call the Colo Development Group office at (641) 377-2278. Once the cafe is open again, the number to call will revert to the cafe: (641) 377-3663.
Tags:cafe, Colo Iowa, Iowa, Lincoln Highway, motel, neon sign, Road trip, roadside cafe, travel, vintage motel
Posted in food, highways, lodging, Road trip, roadside, travel | 1 Comment »
Lincoln Highway News 